Knight and King
by lye tea
Summary: We must all play our respective parts. Caius/Yeul/Noel
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **Can't wait until Lightning Returns comes out. Although this is technically Caius/Yeul/Noel, it's actually mostly Noel/Yeul.

* * *

**Knight and King**

**I.**

His heart was torn, ripped through (still throbbing) and seared.

She didn't know who he was.

She glanced back with empty eyes, curious but indifferent.

_She didn't know_.

She walked toward Caius—away from him.

_She didn't know_.

And this, Noel thought, must be what betrayal was. This ugly, effusive, irrepressible hurt of a thousand stings and a hundred bites.

Wait. He wanted to say. Wait. Tell me, answer me.

She did not look back again as she disappeared, dissipated into light on top of that roof. With Caius following, Caius forever faithful.

"I'm sorry," Serah whispered. Her face was heartfelt and apologetic. Gently, she grasped his shoulder.

Noel shrugged her off. "It's okay. Doesn't matter. I didn't expect her to remember—to know me. How can she? I'm not even born yet."

...

On the day of Yeul's tenth birthday, he asked Caius: which Yeul had been the happiest. Unfazed, Caius stared at him. His eyes were steely, cold, and wrapped in millennia's worth of aching emotions.

And although he did not say (not quite) Noel understood. That this Yeul, the last Yeul, was the first one who knew happiness. For this had been the wish of the countless seeresses preceding her.

...

The disease had begun slowly, but inexorable and insidious, it seeped into the waters and leeched the air of health. And soon, the plants and animals started dying and before long, so did the villagers.

By the time he was five and Yeul was two, the strong beasts had extinguished the weaker ones. Game was sparse and what little they caught was always tainted with the same grimy film. Their hides were gray and flesh blistering, awful and hideous and red.

Noel took a bite. It was horrible, putrescent.

Weathering his grandmother's admonishing frown, he summoned the courage to take another taste. This was all the food they had left. But tomorrow (he swore) he'll go beyond the barriers to hunt. He thought of how Yeul will clap and laugh when he brings her the carcass.

Triumphant, he will be, was certain.

...

Although Serah was not Yeul, he was grateful to have her there. She was comforting and warm and perhaps the greatest (only) friend he had. She could make him laugh, even if it emerged strangled and strangely pitched.

Hearing her talk about Lightning, Sazh, and Hope—and Vanille and Fang (even Snow)—temporarily allayed the gloom and fears and doomed dread of guilt. Droning and drifting as she lulled him asleep. He especially loved when she smiled.

Serah's smile was bright and true, shorn of artifice good and bad. She did not smile to please; it came only when she pleased. There was no grief, no remorse, no beginnings and endings in her smile. Hers was free from guilt.

It was so different from Yeul's, whose smiles metamorphosed by the hour and mirrored all the shades of night. She smiled to prove how brave she was (one of the boys). Because it soothed him, because he wanted her to.

When Yeul smiled, it felt like a tragedy being born. And another part of him was killed, wrenched and dispersed in the barren wind.

...

Yeul was intrigued by flowers. She pronounced the word carefully, rolling it over and over again in her mouth. Her tongue struggled to form the correct syllables.

And so, he tried to whittle one for her. Out of ash-bark and dead-wood, he desperately wanted to resurrect them.

(There were no more flowers in their lifetime.)

...

He felt the thunder roaring through his bones and lightning smoldering his blood. He was bruised and broken and alive. Heavy, the ground dragged him down, down into the turgid, rancid dirt. But he had survived. Above him, Caius sheathed his sword. Their lesson concluded here.

"Get up," Caius ordered calmly.

Sucking in breath, Noel rose. Head pounding, he braced for the onslaught of nausea and vertigo. He had failed to block yet again, failed to master this simple, impossibly basic technique.

"We shall try again tomorrow," Caius continued. "It is important that you learn how to properly counter. It is your duty as a guardian."

"No. _You_ are her Guardian. And I—I'm nobody. I'm not fit to be a guardian. I'm too weak, pathetic."

_Too human_.

Caius did not respond. Instead, he unleashed assault after assault, brutally drilling each dire, invaluable lesson into Noel's flesh. He will be branded with incantations and maneuvers until the skin peeled back raw and crimson, revealing all his mortal shortcomings.

Beyond, waving from atop the boulder, Yeul smiled and cheered them on. She looked so beautiful against the lurid, decaying rust-sky. And if only it could be just the two of them, just for a moment. Without Caius, without the world. Only a boy and a girl and a lifetime ahead.

Dodging an attack, Noel suddenly hated his mentor.

Wanted him dead.

...

Yeul had an insatiable curiosity and constantly hounded Caius for her past lives. And every time, Caius patiently, kindly explained that disclosing any information about her previous cycles was forbidden.

"Caius," she whispered, eyes downcast and demure. "You and I both know that I will be the last Yeul. There can be no harm."

"Nonetheless, it is not something I can do. Please do not ask of me."

"I don't have much time left. Will you be there…in the end? I saw Noel but not you."

He swallowed hard and turned away. He couldn't face her like this: all his cowardice and madness engraved harshly, unrepentantly on his face. He must feign strength for her sake and the boundless sacrifices she had made.

"Answer me, Caius, please. Will you be there in the end?"

_As I die?_

"I will try."

...

Heart trembling in wild staccato beats, Noel raced inside the temple. He careened around the corner, almost scraping against the ruined frieze, and rushed to her.

Yeul.

_Yeul_.

"Yeul!" he called. "Hey, are you all right?"

She was breathing heavily, kneeling on the damp, frigid stone. A layer of sweat had exploded, coating her skin in a cloying perfume of rot and honey. He gripped her hand with his own, mesmerized by how small and pale and frozen it felt.

_Don't die. Please don't die_.  
—This he cried, knowing otherwise.

"I'm glad to see you, Noel, just one last time."  
—_Glad it's you, that it's always been you._

(Fortified by the somnolent vacuity of Valhalla, Caius watched her die, cradled and loved in Noel's arms. The boy released a strangled howl as her body dissolved, absolved of burdens and pain. Silently, Caius commiserated with him.)


	2. Chapter 2

**II. **

By the time Caius was born, the original Yeul had already dwindled into a legend.

She was the first human, the first to be cursed by god. She died without fanfare, lost, abandoned and tranquil (the accidental prey of a behemoth). But Etro's vast, hollow heart boomed with pity for the girl who looked so much like herself.

_She who had been alone_.

Sobbing, the goddess sent her back and wondered if this was how Mwyn had felt, kissing her child (just before devouring it whole).

But that Yeul was now no more than mythical, fantastical. And so, he considered the first Yeul as the Yeul he first knew. The one he sacrificed and devoted his life for, the one who inflicted upon him this scourge and bane.

(Reluctantly, he stood aside and watched as Noel fell in love with her—_with his Yeul_.)

...

The Yeul who prophesied the War of Transgression was the first Yeul to see Noel. The vision came sudden and brutal, siphoning the last of her strength with its weary might. It stopped short of killing her (not how she was destined to die).

Exhausted and breathing heavily, she rested her head against his back and whispered of a boy who was yet to live. And Caius could tell from the way her eyes sparkled and voice grew low that she loved this boy not-born.

"I saw me laughing with him. He made me happy. I felt it."

Judiciously, Caius disguised his contempt as apathy. If for a brief moment she could experience joy, then that was enough.

...

In Oerba, two hundred years after Cocoon collapsed, she pleaded for him not to kill that boy—the one she'd come to pity and adore intermittently. Poised to kill, he relented (just this once).

...

She told him of the Dying World, of the last Yeul to walk the desolate, parched land. Fascinated, stoic, he listened as her words unraveled her own demise. She spoke of the encounter between him and Noel and his pledge to end the world, time itself.

Solemn, she declared that it was pointless. Seven hundred years was not too long, and she was content to wait. After all, she had died so many, many times already. One more won't hurt.

"When you fight him," she begged. "Please be gentle. He will still be so young."

And that he promised her because this Yeul was one of his favorites.

...

Caius never ate food nor did he drink water. He never slept. Never changed. And for him, she wept, for his eternity that seemed so much crueler than her own. At least she could live anew each time.

"Do you regret anything, Caius?"

Steely, he answered her. "I have nothing left to regret."

"Will you tell me about her? About _your_ Yeul? It was for her that you became a guardian, was it not?"

He tensed and immediately she was sorry. Sighing, he unearthed the soliloquy he had memorized centuries ago. Each rebirth, each one different, and still they ask for the same. As much as it pained him, he persisted in denying her—this shred of bitterness that remained solely his own.

...

He was so tired of counting her deaths, of reciting her visions and distilling them for descendants of descendants of children she will never have.

She will never know what marriage is (though she had seen the apocalyptic demise of cathedrals and holy lands).

She will never suffer and win against an illness that turns her hair white (silver and starlit, she was already old).

She will never grow higher than his chest (straining, she attempted to crown him with daisies).

She will never witness him die (emancipate him of his despair, gorging the sorrow and making it her own).

For now, he was content to observe her play, always a few feet away. At three-years-old, the seeress was prone to wandering through icy streams and tearing up Yakshini nests. He could rest—sleep easy—knowing that she had ten years left.

_She will never…_

And repeat.

...

At last, Yeul wound to a stop.

The mother glared at him ferociously, hugging the tiny child, thinking if she could return it to her body then _he_ will depart. Vanished and vanquished and forever-ever gone.

So when he granted her the concession (pardon) she cried with elation and relief. Although suspicious, she did not question the tall man—this _Caius_. No man was foolish enough to mangle his savior.

"Do we get to keep her?" Noel asked, peeping from behind the door.

"Yes. Yes, we do."

...

The gods were sadistic.

That was the single justifiable explanation why they created her thus: made his first Yeul and the last one the same.

He laughed. Harsh and guttural and pierced with delirious anguish. Of course—how could he forget?—_all_ Yeuls were the same, down to each lock of hair, each nick and mole on her limbs. If he peeled her apart, she'd bleed the same.

And he was sorely tempted to try—

Defy fate, just once.

...

He noticed them grow closer by the day. Yeul was never too far apart from the boy, clinging to his arms, stubby legs carrying her unsteadily to him. Blushing, Noel flung her hands away, only to forfeit when her expression scrunched up with tears.

Caius was amused. Never before had she showered such blatant, almost _ardent_, attention upon anyone. And so, when the boy approached him, beseeching to learn how to fight, he agreed.

...

Noel progresses slower than he wished. His swings lacked the frigid ferocity of assurance, and his blocks were weak, hesitant.

But whenever Yeul cheered on their sparring, Noel lurches with power. Raw and animate, his reprisal conveyed sufficient force to nearly topple Caius.

Maybe there was still a chance.

Curious, Caius probed and prodded. Noel fell back again, shattered into an inglorious heap.

And maybe there was none.

...

During the winter of fourteenth birthday, Yeul became sick. Deathly sick only not. This was not how she will die (not prophesied). Although Noel ran frantic with worry, guarding her all hours of the night, Caius was not disconcerted.

She shivered underneath the thin quilt, her body ragged and wrecked and creaking of bones and blood clots. Resting a demure kiss upon her cheek, he vowed that everything would be okay.

"Let us leave, Noel. She needs her rest."

Before this time next year, Noel will be stronger.

And he will be gone (one way or another).

And she—she will be no more.


End file.
